Tag Archives: ladder

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Laundry, Fire Escape, Chinatown

May 2, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Laundry is hung to dry on fire escape above the streets of Chinatown, San Francisco.

This is a photography from one of my early morning photo-walks in San Francisco last summer. I take the train to the City very early in the morning and then walk. A lot. On this morning I passed through Chinatown on my way to the North Beach area fairly early in the morning – well before the tourist crowds showed up. A few blocks from the main tourist area it is a different world with markets opening up, deliveries being made, and busy people everywhere. I was working in more or less traditional street photographer style – to the extent that someone armed with a DSLR can do that ! – and shooting with just a 50mm prime lens on the camera and trying to work quickly as images presented themselves.

I imagine that many people who pass through here may easily be so focused on the activity at the street level that they might not look up. It often strikes me as surprising that in areas where so much is going on at street level – many people, colorful shop fronts, lots of action – the fronts of buildings right above present a completely different appearance. The first thing that caught my attention here was the laundry festooning the fire escape landings. But I also like the geometry of dark landings, ladders, and pipes against the lighter stucco wall, and the wonderful light coming through the morning haze from upper right and casting the lined shadows across the walls of the building.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Yellow Buildings, Fence, and Night Sky

April 26, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Night photograph of abandoned industrial buildings from the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

The building on the left is sometimes known as the “UFO Building” – not because of anything that might be stored inside, but because of a shadow in the shape of a “flying saucer” that forms on one of its walls. I thought it was the only one until I took this photo in which you might spot another saucer-shaped shadow on the wall of the building at the right.

This scene is not a particularly unusual one at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, a place that is full of old industrial buildings left over from the long ship-building history on this island. Many of the old buildings are now in a state of somewhat arrested development, but they certainly show the signs of age and lack of care – lots of boarded up buildings, peeling paint, warnings about hazards of various kinds, and so forth.

Most of the light in this photograph comes from a bank of strong security lights on the exterior of a more modern nearby building, and the yellow color is a result of the type of lighting that is used. There is also a bit of full moon light in the shadows and on the bit of cloud at the upper right, and this also explains the lighter coloration of the sky. When making night photographs in a place like this, I feel comfortable about not really trying to “capture” an objective reality of the place. To be blunt, that is pretty much impossible. First of all, it is actually so dark in many of these places that it takes a while for your eyes to get used to it. Secondly, there are so many varied light sources with so many different colorations that it is essentially impossible to “color correct” the scene – though I’m not even quite certain what it would mean to do that in a scene that we really can’t “see” with our own eyes.

The idea in my night photography is not often to capture the scene as it “is,” but instead to reflect the way “the camera sees,” a way of seeing that is quite different from our native modes of seeing. Things that occur over long periods of time (exposures measured in minutes) appear in a single frame, sometimes objects lose their definition as shadows move and wind blows, stars create streaks in the sky and passing clouds blur, and the colors are far from “natural.”

Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Shacks and Ship Yard Structures

February 20, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Shacks, trestles, pipes and other shipyard structures against a night sky – Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

Several years ago I shot more or less this scene and created a black and white photograph from it, and since then I’ve been thinking of trying to work with the scene again. I’ve been back, but ended up not shooting it for a variety of reasons, including a tall fence that now blocks the view a bit. On another occasion I decided not to shoot it since there was no moon… and the original photograph was done in full moon light. (“It wouldn’t look like my other photograph.” What a silly reason to not shoot it!)

This time I wandered over to this area to shoot a different subject, the companion structure that sits just north of this one. (Both support large overhead “tracks” along which some sort of machinery was able to lift and move large things like ship engines from the shop to the waterfront.) With my tripod cranked up to a foot or so above my head, the camera could “see” over the fence, so I decided to go ahead and shoot this subject again.

Technically, there are a few challenges in the shot. The bright light is very close to the first building and it ends up being very bright and the light is a very saturated yellow color – so that limits the maximum exposure. At the same time, there are some deeply shadowed areas in the structure that you can probably spot – come of the areas under parts of the tower for example. In addition, the city of Vallejo lies beyond this facility – you can see a bit of the glow from its lights in the distance – and some of the city lights would be directly visible if I wasn’t careful with camera placement.

I’m intrigued by several things about this subject. As a decommissioned ship yard, it is interesting to think about what it must have been like here in the past when all of this was in use. (Mare Island’s history goes well back into the 1800’s when it was the first west coast naval ship yard.) I also marvel at the “stuff” that I see that I can’t understand at all. I have no idea what many of those pipes were for or even what must have gone on in these little buildings. And the weathered, rusted, decaying character of the structure itself is interesting to me.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Boy Climbing Hill, San Francisco

March 13, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A boy walks up a steep sidewalk past iconic though dilapidated San Francisco buildings.

Shot in not the absolute greatest neighborhood of San Francisco – but not the worst either. Initially my main subject was this very narrow and very worn looking building – a typical San Francisco structure. I also liked the very muted color palette of the scene – most browns and tan with abit of white and some gray from the sidewalk and street in the foreground, with everything lit softly – no direct light – by the open sky and reflections from buildings on the sunny side of the street. Of course, I wanted a person in the frame, and I quickly spotted this young fellow walking briskly up the hill. A small detail: I like the way that the angle of his back is parallel to the one spot of red color on the wall above him and to the fire escape ladder higher up on the front of the building.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
ISO 200, f/11, 1/80 second

keywords: boy, person, walk, climb, sidewalk, street, urban, city, downtown, home, apartment, building, architecture, dilapidated, worn, san francisco, california, usa, north america, travel, wall, car, door, gate, steps, steep, windows, reflections, pattern, fire, escape, ladder, blinds, laundry, classic, stories, tall, narrow, home, frame, balcony, landing, peeling, stock

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.